Genius Awards 2012

Collectively they've invented a new solar technology and started foundations to fight cancer and bring water to Africa. They're saving dolphins, energy, and lives. And the oldest among them is a mere 36.

Collectively they've invented a new solar technology and started foundations to fight cancer and bring water to Africa. They're saving dolphins, energy, and lives. And the oldest among them is a mere 36.

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Courtesy of Barbara Bush

Barbara Bush, 30

In 2009 "we went into meetings thinking that people wouldn't really pay attention to us," says Barbara Bush (yes, daughter of), Global Health Corps' cofounder and CEO. "But everyone we met was like, 'Yes! We need to invest in our future's leaders!' " Three years later, GHC, which partners with local and global organizations to deploy young professionals on fellowships in impoverished communities, is sending 90 fellows into the field. "As dire as world health care has become," Bush says, "I'm not overwhelmed by the issues because I talk to people, our fellows, who are doing something about them every day."—Seth Plattner

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Courtesy of Melissa Fisher

Melissa Fisher, 34

As chief operating officer for Friends of the High Line, the organization turning 1.45 miles of elevated train tracks into a vibrant park on New York's West Side, Melissa Fisher works with everyone, from the board and its donors to the community, fundraising, planting, chasing trespassers out of the park after hours. What she's learned? "If there weren't a problem to solve, I would be so bored!"—Allison P. Davis

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Courtesy of Meredith Perry

Meredith Perry, 22

"Convincing the world that a blond girl with no engineering degree can come up with technology that actually works" has been a challenge, says Meredith Perry. Yet fresh out of the University of Pennsylvania she's invented a transmitter, called UBeam, that can recharge laptops, cell phones, and tablets cordlessly, using ultrasonic waves. At energy hot spots in public spaces, "all you'll have to do is lift your phone in the air and charge it." —Catherine Straut

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Courtesy of Yael Cohen

Yael Cohen, 25

At age 22 Yael Cohen started Fuck Cancer, a foundation with two missions: first, encouraging young people to act as early-detection ambassadors (Go get your colonoscopy, Mom!) and to ask their parents about family history and potential dangers; and, second, harnessing her generation's secret weapon—social media—by building an online community for friends and family of cancer patients as well as the patients themselves. She hopes this will help humanize the disease on a large scale. "It might be arrogant," she says, "but we are the first generation with the technology to change the whole world."—Allison P. Davis

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Courtesy of Ubah Hassan

Ubah Hassan, 25

Ubah Hassan is a runway model and an Oxfam America Sisters on the Planet ambassador, and in February she launched Maji Umbrellas (maji means "water" in Swahili). Each $40 umbrella sold by the nonprofit provides a day's worth of clean water for 20 people in the Horn of Africa, where water shortages grow more desperate each year. "In North America, rain is something we don't want," Hassan says. "We hope with our umbrellas to [teach people to] say, 'It's raining again! Thank you, God, I have rain.'"—Elyse Moody

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Courtesy of Phil Cavali

Leilani Münter, 36

This past February race car driver Leilani Münter blew a tire in a big race in Daytona. The 36th-place finish hurt, but, she says, "that tire blowing was one of the best things that could've happened because it got us on TV." It meant that the decals wrapping her car—promoting The Cove, the 2009 documentary exposing dolphin slaughter in Japan—became a story. Her biology degree and passion for conservation make her "a misfit in a room of racing people. But if I didn't have the car, I wouldn't have the voice to bring up the issues to a mainstream audience."—Elyse Moody

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Courtesy of Eden Full

Eden Full, 20

"At 13 I realized there were better things to be doing than class," says Eden Full. Six years later she made good on that realization, quitting Princeton for a $100,000 Thiel fellowship to invent the SunSaluter, a $10 device that enables solar panels to track the sun's trajectory across the sky, increasing their efficiency by up to 40 percent.—Diana Kapp

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Courtesy of Bianca Howard

Bianca Howard, 24

Using data from New York City to suss out how much energy is consumed by every single building in its five boroughs, Bianca Howard created a map New Yorkers can use to zoom in on their high-rise or brownstone and click it for an energy-use breakdown. "That's what everybody does first," says Howard, a PhD candidate in mechanical engineering at Columbia University. She envisions her map inspiring city dwellers to brainstorm ways to cut energy consumption; already she's collaborating with the mayor's Office of Long-term Planning and Sustainability, using her expertise and data to help New York reach a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 30 percent by 2030.—Elyse Moody

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Courtesy of Natalie Fields

Natalie Fields, 34

In 2009 Natalie Fields founded the Accountability Counsel, which provides first-class legal representation for communities suffering environ­mental abuses from giant international development projects, like hydroelectric dams. "People who come to us generally have tried everyone else," says Fields. "And they are desperate."—Justine Harman

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Courtesy of Daniela Witten

Daniela Witten, 28

"Amazon and Google use algorithms for displaying ads and recommending books for you to read," says the University of Washington assistant professor. "I develop the same types of algorithms, but for denoting the human genome," helping scientists make connections between genes and disease.—Catherine Straut

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Courtesy of Alexa von Tobel

Alexa von Tobel, 28

Alexa von Tobel was a Harvard grad with a prime job on Wall Street, yet she was lost when it came to the basics of her personal finances. "I couldn't understand how a topic that's so critical wasn't being taught in high schools or colleges," she says. So she created what she thought was missing. LearnVest is an online financial planning platform that links all your bank and credit card accounts in one place, and offers money-managing tips, newsletters, courses, certified financial planners for customized support, and five-year financial forecasts, for only a couple hundred dollars. "There's this conundrum that, in order to get a financial plan, you have to have thousands of dollars, but you need a financial plan to properly build your wealth," von Tobel says. "Financial planning shouldn't be a luxury."—Catherine Straut

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